Tradition, Identity and Performance

ISBN-13: 9783838364940 / Angielski / Miękka / 2010 / 328 str.

Caleb Chrispo Okumu

Opis

The story of contemporary African popular music has had a new interface of television. Television has become a medium from which musical cultures are acted and disseminated to the wider audiences. The introduction of television in South Africa in 1976 introduced new challenges and opportunities for black musicians to renegotiate their performance practices against the increasingly intense commercialisation of music. Television provided a stage for the holistic view of contemporary performance cultures. It is argued that television constructs tradition for practitioners such as artists, producers, audiences, media, record and fashion industries. Television thus plays the role of providing evidence for social constructions of reality in contemorary African music cultures. This reading will help shed light on the relationships between tradition, identity and performance and a valuable addition to popular music and media studies.

O autorze

Okumu earned his PhD from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. He writes on popular music and the media and is also a recording artist and director of the Maseno University Band. He is currently an associate professor of music and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Maseno University in Kenya.